Today marks the 10-year anniversary of Taking Back Sunday’s first record, Tell All Your Friends. Part of me wishes I could say that makes me feel old, but I can’t. Not really. It would be one thing if I had purchased TAYF when it came out, but it feels disingenuous to say that about a record that I bought five years ago (no matter how old the record itself is).

Even though I completely slept on Tell All Your Friends (and Taking Back Sunday), I fell in love with this record once I finally bought it. It is one of my go-to, comfort food records and has the iTunes play count to prove it 🙂 I was tempted to do nothing but quote songs in this post, but I decided to refrain.

I don’t remember how exactly I found out that TAYF was released on March 26, 2002 (or why, for that matter), but I did. I have a little reminder in iCal and everything. Apparently I’m not the only person who knows the date, either. #TellAllYourFriends was a trending topic on Twitter today. The best part of that were the couple of tweets I saw from people who used that hashtag in a non-TBS context, most likely because they didn’t know why people had started it in the first place. It was quite amusing.

I’ve been celebrating the anniversary by listening to Tell All Your Friends pretty much exclusively. (I have no qualms about listening to my favorite records on repeat. I’m pretty much positive that I will never get sick of TAYF.) If I’d been thinking, I would’ve watched some of the videos from that record as well. Like the “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut from the Team)” video. (And not just because “Cute Without the ‘E'” is my favorite Taking Back Sunday song and video.)

Ironically, the version on YouTube is uncensored but the version I bought from iTunes five years ago is censored. (Heaven forbid I hear the word “gun” in song lyrics. Blah.)

So, congratulations to Adam, John, Mark, Shaun, and Eddie. Ten years later and it’s still an amazing album (and, even more importantly, the band is still going strong).

If you’ve never listened to Tell All Your Friends, do yourself a favor and listen to it. (It’s available on Spotify.) I’m not promising that it will change your life, but it’s a damn good record and everyone should listen to it at least once.